Book I of III: The Swords of the Sultan (35 page)

“
She
was not created to kill, or to
combat against other swords, but simply be an artistic masterpiece!
Not even on his dying day would he tell how he got the money for
these materials. Or for the materials to make another sword, which
I had no choice but to sell about six years back, in order to keep
this shop running when business was really slow and rent was
due.

“I—we—still don’t have to worry about paying
rent for the next ten years, and business is doing good. So after I
teach you everything you need to know, and I retire when you’re
twenty-one years old, you will be able to keep the shop efficiently
running on your own. Okay?”

“Okay, Popa.”

“Son, let me talk a little more about
this
sword
and what
she
can do….
she
can chop off a
man’s head with but one light swipe! After all, this three-foot
long blade of steel was folded hundreds of times over, in order to
make the entire blade, as you can clearly see, paper-thin! As for
the tempered and very sharp edges that run up and down both sides,
they’ve been measured at 1/1000th of an inch—in other words, very
few blades in the entire world can match this one.”

After his verbal explanation, he pulled an
apple out of his pocket, and tossed it up into the air. Once the
apple had risen to its maximum height of a foot and a half, he
rapidly flicked his sword-bearing wrist back and forth one time.
This action caused not only the sword to sing loudly for a moment,
yet for the very apple to fall to the ground in three pieces.

“Whoa.”

“Now, my son, feasts your eyes upon the
pommel, but please do not touch the sword,” his father added, while
carefully flipping the sword around until he was gently holding the
blade, and the handle was facing Baltor.

The first thing he saw looking back at him
was a golden hawk’s head that served as the pommel—a hawk that had
two large diamonds representing its eyes.

The next thing was the
foot-long/vanilla-colored leather grip, which leather had been
tightly wrapped around the handle, before it was wrapped and
secured by leather string.

Finally came the defensive bracers, which not
only had a golden sun disk on one side, yet a platinum moon-disk on
the other—on both sides were masterfully chiseled two ivory hawks,
safely tucked inside the curvy defensive bracers, made of solid
steel.

His father continued, “Again, you can clearly
see the countless more hours that your grandfather placed just into
the design of this sword, eh?”

Baltor’s head nodded up and down in complete
agreement, both then and now.

His father twisted the sword around until the
very top of the sword was facing Baltor, and with excitement adding
to his voice, he said, “On the top of the hawk’s head, you can even
see our family’s royal crest, which according to Grandpa Veran,
originates back more than a millennium.

“He told me, as his father told him, and so
on and so on, that our ancestors once ruled a great Province that
was larger than the Sharia Empire! Our ancestors went by the name
of the Elysians. But something happened where we lost the entire
empire.”

After a short pause, he added, “Grandpa Veran
told me that, as a youth, he had found the design on an old
parchment located in an old trunk, and then showed the design to
your Great-grandfather Pabs. That was when your great grandfather
explained the meaning of the crest, and our ancestral heritage, to
your grandfather.

“Ironically enough, it was right after he had
married Grandma Blasa that, while in the process of making this
very sword, he had a horseback-riding accident that ultimately
caused both of his legs to become paralyzed. You never met your
grandmother before, as she died a year before you were born…”

After taking a deep gulp of air through just
his mouth, Baltor’s father continued, “And when I was about your
age, just after I had first discovered the sword and mentioned to
Grandpa Veran, that was when he told me all that I’m telling you
now. Even way back then, however, it was too late for me, as I had
literally popped my knees out several years before, after having
accidentally fallen out a tall tree that ended any and all chances
for me to ever become a hero.”

He had to swat away a fly that had been
buzzing near his ear, before he added, “As for the reasons why no
other of our family members has tried, I do not know, but I’m sure
there must have been a good reason in every case.

“Your grandfather even believed in a chosen
one, but I do not—I keep my head firmly rooted in the ground, so
that I can make ends meet for our family. As you well know, we may
not be rich, but we certainly survive.”

His father concluded his spiel with this:
“So, who knows? One day, this sword and everything it represents
will be yours; that is, if you can beat the family curse…

“But now is not the time. For now, we must
keep our heads firmly grounded in reality, as we have lots of
horseshoes to repair before dinner tonight. Okay?”

“Okay, Popa.”

Once Baltor had gotten one final look at the
crest, his father carefully placed the sword back into the trophy
case, and locked it back up.

Without warning, the parameters of the dream
changed into “utter darkness,” which darkness snuffed out the view
of the sword—when he next opened his eyes, still in the dream, he
saw that his hands were only a little bigger and still youthful,
and that he was lying in his old bed back in his parents’
house!

Just like the night when his parents had been
murdered, he was once again extremely terrified for some strange
reason.

He suddenly had his explanation, as he heard
his father’s outraged cries of protest, and even though Baltor knew
what was about to happen, he even now could do nothing except for
lie there frozen in bed.

Just as before, he heard his father’s death
scream, and moments later, his mother’s, as well!

At that moment, just like that fateful night,
his body became unfrozen, and he managed to get out of bed, put on
his clothes and shoes, and crawl out the window—that was all he
could do.

It was while climbing across the roof that he
observed something moving on the ground that he had not seen that
night, perhaps due to his fearful, shocked, and devastated state,
though those fear and shock levels were on a slightly lesser scale.
This time, he saw a horse parked out in the back of the shop.

In particular, Baltor observed that this
horse was a powerful white stallion, and hanging from its youthful
neck, it bore a gold crest on the front with two crossed sabers—the
crest of the Sultan!

It was then that the dream faded back into
nothingness, and it seemed that only a second or two later, he woke
up.

Even where he lay inside the cave, and the
seven-hundred-pound bear still lying on top of him, he knew that it
was night.

He immediately tried to squeeze himself out
from underneath the bear, yet this time, he surprisingly found that
it was like removing a featherweight!

He stood up onto his feet, and then examined
his shoulder where the bear had bitten him.

Interestingly enough, even though he saw that
his shirt was torn, his skin was not; in fact, there was no
evidence of damage in his shoulder at all, not even a bruise!

As he moved his painless shoulder around and
around to confirm, he noticed that the leech scars had completely
disappeared, as did his forearm scar, yet these little movements
caused his stomach to grumble.

A second later, he left the parameters of the
cave, looking for something alive to eat. Not only was he hungry,
but quite famished!

He scanned the prairie out, but there were no
decent-sized animals to be found anywhere—right away he began to
run westward, back into the thick clusters of trees.

Even though Baltor immediately discovered
that his speed and powers had diminished from the night prior, he
was still quite aware that he was running about a mile every two
minutes.

It seemed only minutes had passed before his
nostrils detected the smell of fresh meat.

His beast mind once again took over for some
time. Once his human mind had come back, an unknown amount of time
later, he saw that he had just finished feasting upon the blood of
an ape.

Though he heard the alarmed sounds of other
apes screaming from within the trees, he no longer felt famished,
as well feeling a bit repulsed from his vampiric act, so he
continued in his voyage, ignoring those light hunger pains.

By dusk the next morning, he was on the brink
of starving, feeling oh so weak and hungry. Even though he had been
diligently searching for food halfway through the night, there was
no other game found, nor could he find any caves.

Only minutes before the sun was about to
rise, he furiously dug a shallow grave in the dirt and buried
himself in it. He had just finished covering himself under the dirt
when the sunlight penetrated the area.

The next night, he awoke due to an
excruciating hunger—moreover it had actually become intensely
painful in his entire midsection!

Through the agony he pulled himself out of
the dirt, just before scanning through the thick forest of trees
while sniffing the air trying to find some living creature with
blood. Unfortunately nothing was nearby, and so he hightailed it
west—running just a bit faster than the fastest human can on the
entire planet.

About a dozen or so minutes later, he ran
into another small clearing, just as the cloudy skies above began
to pour down rain.

At the far end of the clearing, there were
several long-necked animals with orange and black polka dots
feasting on the leaves at the top of tall and lush trees.

Never before had he seen such an animal, but
his bestial mind did not comprehend, or even care. The only thing
the beast knew was that
it
was going to feast! In the blink
of an eye, the beast was on one of them, and gorging away on the
blood.

Even though it felt to the beast that
it
had drunk a ton of blood before this large animal turned
dry. By the time the beast was done,
it
didn’t feel very
satisfied at all, as if it had only been an appetizer.

Before his human mind had the chance to come
back,
it
had already tracked down another species of the
same animal and consumed it as well—by the time his human mind had
returned, he felt much better though not full, and so he continued
along his way.

It was on the fourth night of his journey
back that he discovered that his powers and speed had faded to
normal. No game at all was to be found anywhere this night, and
Baltor nearly starved to death!

During the last two nights of Baltor’s trip
through the jungle, he had to dig shallow graves, as he could find
no caves whatsoever—the only good thing about these nights was that
he was able to find enough animals to keep him barely alive.

As for the two reasons he seriously hated
sleeping under the dirt—not only because he hated getting the dirt
off and out of him after having awakened, yet more so because of
all the underground bugs and worms that loved to crawl on his body,
too.

Upon reaching the borders of the mountains,
he chose to head north and cross the mountains via another path.
After all, he did not want to eat any of the friendly folk from
Valakan, even accidentally.

So north is where he headed, and he took the
next valley entrance. Though the blizzard weather conditions and
freezing temperatures would have frozen to death the unprepared
traveler, he startlingly noted that it had no effect on him,
whatsoever.

It took him a week to cross through the
mountains in a southwestern direction, while always luckily finding
caves to sleep in, and wolves or other small animals to quench his
thirst, but never had he, during this last stage of his journey,
run across a single human. That was about to change.

Just after sunset the following night, Baltor
found and sucked the blood from a rabbit, though it did absolutely
nothing to curb his thirst and hunger, and though he did not orally
voice his complaints, his stomach certainly made up for the silence
through its continuous whining and grumbling.

After having traveled through the valley of
the very last mountains, he saw that the mountains here nearly
abruptly transformed themselves into the Sharia Desert.

As he gazed out at the sandy dunes, he
realized that he must still be an unknown distance north of where
he had originally entered the mountain pass, though his initial
goal had been to reach the fertile valley. Therefore, he began
walking southwest.

After having traveled halfway through the
moonless night without any encounters at all, animal or otherwise,
he finally saw a large fire up ahead in the distance, perhaps a
dozen miles away.

As he drew nearer to about two hundred feet
away, he could see that this bonfire was located within the
confines of a rather large oasis, which also contained a large
lagoon and a half-dozen or so parked wagons with men and women
camping all around it.

As he drew to about one hundred feet away
from the oasis, he counted a little over two-dozen people within
his field of vision, while noticing that three-quarters of them
were still engaged in a celebratory party.

Of course he was aware that this number did
not include those possibly sleeping in the wagons or those perhaps
hiding on the other side of palm trees—all those outside of
Baltor’s field of vision.

Fifty feet away, he observed as a bald-headed
man unexpectedly jumped onto the top of a wagon and began to make
beep-box sounds with his mouth—a very harmonious tune and beat, as
it turned out.